1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus configured to form an image on a sheet, and more specifically to an image forming apparatus including a manual feed portion that feeds a manually inserted sheet to an image forming portion.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a printer, a facsimile, a multifunction machine having their functions, and the like is generally provided with sheet feed cassettes each of which stores a sheet such as a printing sheet. The sheet is supplied from these sheet feed cassettes to an image forming portion.
While there exist various sizes of sheets, each of the above-described sheet feed cassettes stores a bundle of sheets of different size. Accordingly, although the image forming apparatus is provided with the plurality of sheet feed cassettes, it is unable to provide a number of sheet feed cassettes corresponding to all kinds of sizes of sheets handled by the image forming apparatus and hence, it is unable to supply all kinds of sizes of sheets to the image forming apparatus by sheet feed cassettes. In addition, if a sheet inside a sheet feed cassette needs to be replaced every time when a sheet of a different size is fed, the replacement work itself is troublesome. Therefore, an image forming apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-268585 for example is configured such that sheets of sizes that are frequently used by a user are stored in sheet cassettes while sheets of sizes that are less frequently used are fed to an image forming portion from a manual feed portion.
The manual feed portion described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-268585 is provided with a manual feed port on a side surface of the image forming apparatus and with a manual feed tray on the side surface of the image forming apparatus such that the manual feed tray can be opened and closed. The manual feed apparatus is then configured to allow a user to place a sheet on the opened manual feed tray and to feed the sheet placed on the manual feed tray through the manual feed port to the image forming portion.
In the image forming apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-268585, however, the manual feed port and the manual feed tray are provided on a lower part of the side surface of the image forming apparatus in order to feed a sheet to be manually inserted from an upstream side in a sheet conveying direction of the image forming portion. Therefore, the user is required to open/close the manual feed tray every time when he/she manually feeds a sheet. There is also a case when the user is required to open/close the manual feed tray and to place a sheet on the manual feed tray in a crouched position. For this reason, there is a demand on eliminating the necessity of opening/closing the manual feed tray and of placing a sheet in a crouching position.
Furthermore, since the manual feed tray that is opened to place a sheet projects from the side surface of the image forming apparatus, a space that allows the manual feed tray to be opened has to be secured upon installation of the image forming apparatus. That is, upon installation of the image forming apparatus, a space that allows the manual feed tray to be opened is needed in addition to a space for placing the image forming apparatus.